Being A 'Bagel Head' Is All The Rage In Tokyo

A bagel head profiled in
the National Geographic TV documentary,
"Taboo."National Geographic
Channel

If you thought Japan's extreme fad culture would stop short of
people injecting saline into their foreheads to make it look like
they have bagels implanted under their skin, you were wrong.
Being a "bagel head" is, indeed, currently in vogue in Tokyo.

The bizarre body modification procedure, which was highlighted in
a Sept. 23 episode of "Taboo," a show on the National Geographic Channel, involves
injecting about 13.5 ounces (400 milliliters) of saline into a
person's forehead to form a huge welt, then pressing a thumb into
the welt to create an indent. The process takes two hours,
and the trendy swelling goes down in under a day.

Questions about what is going through these people's bagel-shaped
heads aside, is this fad dangerous?

Potentially, says Omar Ibrahimi, a dermatologist at the
Connecticut Skin Institute and visiting assistant professor at
Harvard Medical School, who has had experience injecting saline
solution into bodies during cosmetic procedures. The risks of
bagel-heading are threefold, Ibrahimi said.

First, the body can safely absorb normal saline solution
injected under the skin, and doctors sometimes use it as a form
of local anesthesia; however, "saline solution that is too
concentrated can overload the body's capacity to process salt,"
Ibrahimi told Life's Little Mysteries. If a naive bagel head were
to accidentally use highly-concentrated hypertonic
saline solution instead of the normal kind, for example, he or
she could experience extreme dehydration of the kind that happens
when you drink salt water.

Secondly, if the saline solution isn't sterile, there's "a lot of
risk of bacterial or fungal infection," Ibrahimi said. Most of
the pathogens commonly found in unsterilized water can be killed
off by the immune system when ingested into the digestive tract;
however, the pathogens have a higher chance of gaining a foothold
when escorted directly beneath the skin, such as during
bagel-head surgery.

Water contamination is also one of the lesser-known risks of
getting a tattoo. Just last month, the use of unsterile water as
a diluting agent in tattoo ink resulted in
a spate of bacterial infections across four U.S. states. Such
infections cause painful rashes that can last months, requiring
strong antibiotic regimens and sometimes surgery to eradicate.

But even perfectly sterilized saline solution of the ideal
concentration could leave bagel heads deeply regretting their
ultra-fashionableness. And considering that this last risk is
aesthetic, it might make more headway in putting an end to the
trend.

"I'd be worried that if people did this repeatedly you might
actually, indeed, stretch the skin beyond its normal elasticity,
and this could cause permanent laxity," Ibrahimi said.

In other words, bagel heads could become deflated-bagel heads: a
fashion mishap in anybody's book.